Staff photos / Dan Pompili
PNC Bank Youngstown Regional President Ted Schmidt and Alta Care Group CEO Joe Shorokey, center, hold the ribbon while preschool students at Alta Head Start McCartney Learning Center cut it with safety scissors at a grand opening event Wednesday.
YOUNGSTOWN — Children at a local preschool will have a fun new classroom to enjoy, although their parents and teachers will want to wait for the weather to improve before they use it.
Cold winds and snow flurries did not stop the kids and officials at Alta Head Start McCartney Learning Center from cutting the ribbon on the facility’s new outdoor space Wednesday.
The facility will give the school’s 120 students a different kind of environment where they can build a variety of new skills, from developing balance and dexterity to exploring gardening, or just enjoying the simple pleasure of reading in the sunshine.
The space was funded by a $75,000 grant from PNC Bank, through its Grow Up Great initiative.
“We have developed a great relationship with Alta over the years,” said PNC Youngstown Regional President Ted Schmidt. “This project was conceived through the 20th anniversary of our Grow Up Great initiative, which supports children ages 0-5. We just know how important it is to really capture them early in their lives, because it’s not just about playgrounds, it really helps them develop mentally and socially for the rest of their lives.”
Alta Facilities Manager Patrick Thake, who designed the outdoor classroom, said the space includes a corner reading nook, picnic tables, a shaded pergola with a deck, balancing logs and tubes to crawl through, as well as planters where children can play and learn to plant.
The facility was completed by Meyer Design of Akron.
Thake said this is the third such classroom Alta has built in the past two years, thanks to support from PNC. It also opened outdoor spaces at Camp Challenge in Youngstown and Campus of Care in Mineral Ridge.
Before the new space, Thake said, McCartney only had two small playgrounds — one for the 3-5 Head Start group and a smaller enclosed space for the younger Early Head Start children.
The ribbon cutting was one of the last official acts for Alta CEO Joe Shorokey, who is retiring at the end of this week.
“We’ve had a really good, long relationship with PNC bank with their Grow Up Great initiative,” he said. “I’ve been CEO (of Alta) for 10 years, and this is something that we’re very proud to celebrate, after 20 years with PNC and its Grow Up Great initiative.”
